


Pearls

by breathedout



Series: Passchendaele ficlets [12]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Art School, Engagement, F/F, Leaving the small town for the big city, Memory, Presents, When it Rains It Pours, and also marriage!, and its brand new fine art academy, bittersweet goodbyes, visual art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-19 15:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20659322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: Antigonish, Nova Scotia: August 14, 1882"I brought—a wedding present, I suppose," Rebecca said, and then gave an odd little laugh.





	Pearls

**Author's Note:**

> The folks over at [femslashficlets](https://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth are hosting a year-long, 15-ficlet challenge where all the prompts are Janelle Monáe lyrics. I'm using them to create a little cycle of exercises using characters from the three established or hinted-at f/f pairings in the original novel I'm working on. So all of these tiny character studies will be related to one another, and all except three of them will be either Louise/Hazel, Rebecca/Katherine, or Emma/Maisie. Anyone interested in getting to know my characters a little bit as I flesh them out is welcome to follow along!
> 
> This story was written for the prompt "The stories of a land you divide and conquer." Thanks, as always, to [greywash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash) for the speedy once-over!

She jumped about a _foot_ when the door opened; bruising her knee on her steamer trunk; twisting her head around to see, of all people, _Rebecca_—

Katherine bristled; then—cringed; then straightened up, wondering if Rebecca had seen. It was only: there'd been so much to do. _Too_ much to do, and hardly any money with which to do it: for months she had meant to call on Rebecca at home. To invite her out. She'd planned it out: how they'd borrow the carriage and ride out to the shore, shoes off as they'd used to do. She had thought of it every time she passed the Landry place, and it had come to seem such an established fact in her mind, she had almost forgotten that she'd never quite walked up and knocked on Rebecca's door. 

"Good—_gracious_," Katherine said, hand over her heart, "you frightened me." 

"Sorry," said Rebecca. "I didn't mean—but I wanted to catch you alone, before. Well I know all the wedding party will be descending in the next few days, and I—" 

Her eyes kept flicking up, then back down: her wild rose-flushed cheeks, and her neck. Tawny hair coming down from its chignon, tongue tripping over her words while Katherine with a sudden sinking was struck all at once by the horrible weight of—of Rebecca, her Rebecca, feeling unwelcome in Katherine's own rooms. 

"Come in," said Katherine. Bustling forward; spreading her arms. Rebecca's solid weight against her: she could feel Rebecca exhale. Arms coming up around Katherine's waist as Rebecca buried her face, momentarily, in the crook of Katherine's neck, before they broke apart. 

Rebecca was half-smiling, now. Taking in Katherine, head to heels: Katherine smoothed down her rumpled skirts. 

"Trousseau's all packed," she said. "Such as it is."

"You look—lovely. I mean you always look lovely."

"Well. If Ned doesn't mind taking on a charity case, who am I to gainsay him." 

"Katherine Llewellyn," said Rebecca, sharp and admonishing and ineffectual entirely, since Katherine was glad to have said it if it meant she got to be scolded in that old familiar brook-no-nonsense Landry tone. "Don't be absurd. Won't you both be _working_ in Toronto?"

"And in classes." Katherine grinned, then, and took Rebecca's hands. They could have been girls again. "Elementary design in the morning, Perspective in the afternoon, though he's taking Flat Copy. Next term Charlotte Schreiber is teaching oil painting, oh—Rebecca, I can't believe Ned and I are really going." 

She could feel herself beaming and then—stilling, drawn forward by Rebecca's expression. Even as a girl she'd had the most expressive face; and Katherine had wished—she wished, now, for a photographic process so instantaneous she could blink her eyes and _capture_: it was as if for a bare moment the whole of Rebecca's face contracted in on itself, without any individual feature moving at all; and then, as it expanded again, her eyes welled up _just_ enough for Katherine to—_capture_, she thought, _capture_, to pore over later in every detail—but of course it was no use. The moment was gone; Rebecca was simply smiling at her; and even Katherine was not so ill-mannered, anymore, as to make Rebecca wait while she sketched from memory. Rebecca would no doubt tell her she'd done quite sufficient portraits of her over the years.

"I wanted," Rebecca said, and then stopped. Took her hands from Katherine's, then turned to the door; slid it shut. Though Katherine had lain in bed often enough lamenting that the walls gave no relief at all from her neighbours' every shuffle and murmur, she now felt immured, with Rebecca, against the world. 

"I brought—an engagement present, I suppose," Rebecca said, and then gave an odd little laugh. "It was intended as a Christmas gift, actually, the year when you and Ned—and then, well. I suppose the time never seemed right. But it's now or never, isn't it?"

"I—thank you. May I—?"

"Yes," Rebecca said, and drew from her pocket a little jewel-box: black velvet, wrapped in a gold ribbon. She breathed deep, then opened it.

"Rebecca," Katherine said. 

Some echo, ringing. Far-off in the back of her mind: gold, and green; velvet and pearl. The necklace's delicate gold chain thickened at the centre into gold tendrils; twined together gold thorns, with golden offshoots from which grew tiny pearl tear-drops: berries from the vine. And: an afternoon, a lifetime ago; like tart-sweet berry-juice; like salt sweat flooding over her tongue together with canvas, Rebecca's bare skin, and a vision, all complete, of which she hadn't thought, not in years—

"Not a _string_ of pearls, of course," Rebecca was saying. "I couldn't afford that. Oh, and: please, sell it if you need to, or—if you want the money. I know you'll hardly be going around at the Toronto School of Art with—"

"I saw you in green velvet," Katherine said. Remembering—how could she have forgotten?—"with your hair pinned up, gloves—"

"—to the elbow," said Rebecca. Cleared her throat. "I recall." 

She touched Katherine's wrist; looked down at her fingers rubbing gentle at Katherine's skin. Sparks, up Katherine's arm. "I wasn't able to get hold of those," Rebecca said, dryly. "Or the dress." 

Katherine still stood, looking blankly down at the necklace and at Rebecca's thumb and then—blinking hard inhaled, all at once, Rebecca drawing back even before Katherine had closed the box on this lovely, lovely thing. Rebecca withdrawing back into herself; back toward the world. 

"This is so beautiful." Katherine was gasping. Following her toward the door: "I—thank you, I—"

"Go be a world-famous artist, Kate Murray," Rebecca said, hands on the knob behind her back. "Show those Toronto painters what you can do." 

"I'll see you at the wedding," Katherine said, stupidly, the only thing she could think of. But Rebecca had already gone: turned and slipped out and was walking, now, down the corridor, her blunt heels sounding on the boards.

**Author's Note:**

> Charlotte Schreiber was an English-Canadian painter who did indeed teach evening oil painting classes at the newly established (in 1880) Toronto School of Art and Design (later the Ontario School of Art and Design, then the Ontario College of Art), which from its founding did not discriminate on the basis of gender in its admissions.


End file.
